Tonight:
9°c
LEAVING the house yesterday morning I noticed a row of identical objects on my street.
Christmas trees, stripped of their tinselly splendour, were propped outside each of my neighbours' homes, ready for recycling. It was as if a small urban forest had sprung up overnight. Only my own front garden was barren of spruce.
That's because my tree was still blazing away in our window, lighting up the 7am gloom with a little bit of multicoloured love. I'd turned on the lights before I left, as a final, futile act of defiance.
I knew that by the time I returned home the front window would be bare, my beloved tree jettisoned to the street for Islington's binmen to mangle.
Yes, I know it's bad luck to keep decorations beyond the dreaded twelfth night and, given the financial forecast, an entire year of doom isn't something I relish. But it seems brutal to call time on Christmas with the sun still so low in the sky.
Surely I'm not the only person sneaking a warming glass of ginger wine at the end of a long cold day? As the social invites dry to a trickle, it's reassuring to see a healthy crop of cards, a midwinter reminder of fairweather friends.
But for me the tree is the best bit of winter. A blaze of green in the gloom, glimmering with glass shapes and scenting the house with pine, my prized Norwegian spruce brought a welcome bit of wilderness to N19. When the tree was in residence, my house became a home.
“Just one more day,” I pleaded this week, as the Daily Telegraph's list of reasons to rid your house of all things yule was sombrely read to me. “I'm not psychologically ready to let it go.”
Now it's toast. Or woodchip, more likely. Still, only another 349 days until the next tree.
